Capital Gazette Families Fund nears $1 million

The five Capital Gazette employees who were killed on June 28: Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Gerald Fischman. (File photos)

In the two months since the deadly shooting in the Capital Gazette newsroom, donors have contributed more than $935,000 to help the survivors and family members of the victims in gifts as small as $1 and as large as $100,000.

“It’s been the most beautiful, touching thing that we’ve received gifts of $1,” said Amy Francis, development director for the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County, the nonprofit organization handling the funds.

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“Maybe that’s all somebody could afford, but they wanted to show their support for this community, the families and the newspaper.”

She said the 5,500 gifts came from local folks as well as from people as far away as Australia and the United Kingdom.

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In addition, the Capital Gazette Families Fund has been promised a matching grant of up to $1 million from the Michael and Jackie Ferro Foundation. Michael Ferro is the former chairman of tronc, Capital Gazette’s parent company.

The fund was created after a gunman blasted his way into the newsroom on June 28 and shot and killed five Capital Gazette employees: Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith.

A separate fund, the Capital Gazette Memorial Scholarship Fund, was created to provide an annual award for students pursuing a journalism degree at the University of Maryland, College Park. Fischman and McNamara were alumni of the university and Hiaasen a lecturer in journalism there.

That fund has received 304 gifts totaling $150,027, Francis said.

The funds could receive another infusion of money in September, depending on whether the Annapolis City Council votes retroactively to make the city an official sponsor of July’s Annapolis Rising concert on Calvert Street.

City spokeswoman Susan O’Brien said ticket sales from the concert raised $64,000, which has been sent to the Community Foundation. She said it’s unclear how much more money would be available should the council vote for the sponsorship, though that means the city would absorb about $32,000 in police overtime, production equipment rentals and other expenses.

“But we won’t know the final tally until other things, such as food and beverage costs, are cleared up,” she said.

The council last month delayed a vote on the sponsorship until the Sept. 10 meeting.

That came after several aldermen balked, complaining the vote was rushed.

Alderman Ross Arnett, who represents parts of Eastport, sent an email to his constituents in July saying he would vote against the measure.

More recently, he said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the sponsorship, but needed more information, especially given that the council had voted in June for a 14 percent increase in the property tax rate.

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“Everybody was upset about the tragedy and nobody wanted to be an ogre,” he said.

But it was the council’s responsibility “to be careful with taxpayers’ money.”

He said he expects the city administration will answer his questions at a meeting Wednesday of the council’s finance committee.

Elly Tierney, whose Ward 1 includes much of the downtown Historic District, said the problem with the city sponsorship in July “was the process.”

“My constituents felt they were being disenfranchised,” she said. “We didn’t know what it was going to cost us.”

She said she didn’t think Mayor Gavin Buckley’s heart wasn’t “in the right place,” but to vote on sponsorship of the event then “was rushed.” She said she “can’t see where I’d vote against it in September.”

But Alderman Fred Paone, whose Ward 2 includes much of Admiral Heights and parts of West Annapolis, said he still has “many of the same questions now I had then.”

“There was no attempt to answer my questions and I don’t know if there will be in the next two weeks,” he said. “Nobody doubts it’s a good cause. But it would’ve been nice if (the mayor) had kept us informed.”

O’Brien said the administration would have a presentation ready for the council meeting.

Francis said the Community Foundation had planned to accept applications from those affected by the shooting beginning Sept. 1, but they are still waiting on documentation, such as employment records and police witness statements, from tronc and the Baltimore Sun Media group, which own Capital Gazette.

“They’ve provided us a list of names, but for us to manage the process the right way, we need verification,” she said.

She said the Community Foundation has formed a committee to decide how to distribute the money among victim’s families; employees who were in the newsroom and injured in the attack; those in the newsroom who weren’t injured; and those who were employed by Capital Gazette on that day but weren’t there.

Those who receive the money can use it for “whatever they feel is their greatest need,” Francis said.

The foundation had planned to make the first distributions in October, but that could change, depending on when the documentation arrives. It would continue accepting gifts to support the families until Dec. 31 and make a second distribution in January.

After that, she said, the fund will change its purpose, and maybe its name, “but it will be based in contributing to something people in the community feel is important.”